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sticks_us (150624) writes "Lobbyists and officials from twelve countries, including the US, are currently bickering over the details of this massive international "free trade" treaty. They are creating the TPP to strongly promote Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and enforce draconian copyright law, which will hinder free software development."Link to Original Source

sticks_us (150624) writes "In light of shrinking funding, we do need to look for a source tocover project expenses. If need be the OpenBSD Foundation can beinvolved in receiving donations to cover project electrical costs.

But the fact is right now, OpenBSD will shut down if we do not havethe funding to keep the lights on.

If you or a company you know are able to assist us, it would begreatly appreciated, but right now we are looking at a significantfunding shortfall for the upcoming year — Meaning the project won't beable to cover 20 thousand dollars in electrical expenses before beingable to use money for other things. That sort of situation is notsustainable."Link to Original Source

In exchange, of course, you give up whatever freedom you had (now that you're running Oracle's proprietary, closed-source software), and you're now sliding into Oracle's hungry grasp a bit further. Slashdotters, what do you think? Is it worth it?"Link to Original Source

sticks_us (150624) writes "By pairing an infrared sensor with the camera already on board, portable devices could receive data from transmitters placed, well, wherever. Beyond simply blasting out text and opening links like a glorified QR code, transmitters could disable certain features, such as the camera, to prevent recording at movie theaters and music venues. If completely shutting off the cam seems a bit heavy-handed, watermarks can also be applied to photos identifying businesses or copyrighted content..."Link to Original Source

sticks_us (150624) writes "At a news conference following the unsuccessful attempt to place the Glory spacecraft in orbit, a team from NASA and Orbital Sciences Corporation, maker of the Taurus XL rocket, discussed the failure of the rocket's fairing to separate. The fairing, which covers and protects the spacecraft during launch and ascent, underwent a redesign of its separation system after a similar failure two years ago. The new system has been successfully used on another Orbital launch vehicle several times. NASA Launch Director Omar Baez said the countdown and launch went smoothly until the point at which they should have received data indicating that the fairing had separated from the vehicle."Link to Original Source

Our investigation uncovered evidence of password sniffing attempts. We have no evidence to suggest that the sniffing attempt was completed successfully. But, what we definitely don’t want is to find out in 2 months that passwords were compromised and we didn’t take action.So, we’ve invalidated all sourceforge.net account passwords, and to access the site again, everyone will need to go through the email recovery process and choose a shiny new password."Link to Original Source

sticks_us (150624) writes "Evolutionary biology suggests that women, at least, are attracted to hunks – men who have the physical prowess to defend the family. Pushing bits around is hardly aerobic exercise so engineers tend to strike out in that department.

sticks_us (150624) writes "It's difficult to sum up this movie. On one hand, we can say it's a solid action/scifi film. On the other, we can say it is an interesting mashup of cyber-zen, eastern philosophy and open source activism. They don't try to force the themes, but they are present and woven into the structure of the story. The main character, Sam Flynn, son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is a rogue computer programmer. Having inherited his missing father's computer company, which is something like a cross between Microsoft and Apple, he prefers to live alone and play dangerously."Link to Original Source

"Samsung recognizes the tremendous growth potential in this newly created market and we believe that the Samsung Galaxy Tab brings a unique and open proposition to market," said mobile communications unit head JK Shin."Link to Original Source

sticks_us (150624) writes "I came across this blog entry today , where the author is clearly unhappy with the language and restrictions used in a proprietary (non-free) piece of software (POS). I too, was surprised with the document's overall tone and the dismissive approach to the rights of the software user.
As someone who doesn't use non-free software, I'm not familiar with these kinds of EULAs, but I want to ask: is this pretty much par for the course? Are RIAA lawyers moonlighting?"Link to Original Source

sticks_us (150624) writes "FTA: Torvalds was in Melbourne last week for the linux.conf.au conference and was invited to pass judgement on OS X versus Windows Vista in a wide-ranging interview.

"I don't think they're equally flawed — I think Leopard is a much better system," he said. "(But) OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary.""